LUEBKE EAGER TO LIVEN UP FASTBALL DIET WITH MORE OFF-SPEED SPICE

PEORIA, Ariz. 
Like a careful climber scaling a Sequoia, Cory Luebke wants to branch out without going too far out on a limb.

The Padres’ long, lean left-hander would like to find more use for his secondary pitches without forsaking his fastball; to renovate his repertoire without disturbing the load-bearing wall.

“I just pitched so predominantly with my fastball coming up, when I get in tough situations I maybe rely on it too much,” Luebke said Thursday. “I’m just trying to get to the point where no matter what the count, no matter what the situation, I have confidence to go to a quality off-speed pitch.”

Pitching effectively in the major leagues requires a talent for treading philosophical tightropes. You can’t afford to be too predictable, but neither do you want to risk getting beat by something other than your best pitches. You want the hitters guessing wrong and you need the ability to frustrate them even when the answer is obvious.

You want what Cory Luebke has mostly caught but continues to chase: the stuff of which dreams are made.

“If I were him, I wouldn’t change a thing,” said Bob Scanlan, the former pitcher and new Padres radio analyst. “He was filthy last year. The only time he got in trouble was when he wasn’t throwing quality pitches with two strikes with his slider.”

“Trouble,” in Luebke’s case, is a relative term. Despite an unsightly 6-10 record last season, Luebke’s individual statistics suggest potential stardom. His 3.29 earned-run average, 6.8 hits per nine innings and 3.5-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio were all indicative of superior stuff. Of his 10 losses, six were suffered against Clayton Kershaw, Ian Kennedy and Cole Hamels — the first, fourth and fifth finishers in the National League’s Cy Young Award competition.

In a Padres rotation in search of an ace, Luebke might be the pitcher who best fits that profile and stands closest to a big breakthrough. He is a talent in need of fine-tuning.

“His internal numbers are fantastic …” said Darren Balsley, the Padres’ pitching coach. “They were excellent last year, but he should be able to manage the game a little better. I’d like to cut down on his walks. His strikeouts-to-walks are very good, but it just seems like sometimes — I don’t know if it’s a loss of focus or a loss of feel — an at-bat will just get away from him.”

Some of this is a reflection on Luebke’s command; some, perhaps, on his confidence in his curveball and change-up. According to pitching numbers crunched by STATS, Luebke was more reliant on his fastball than any of the three Padres pitchers who logged more innings than he did in 2011, throwing it on 67 percent of his pitches. Though Balsley disputes some of those findings, he says Luebke’s was pretty close to the mark. The pitcher himself guessed he had thrown 80 percent fastballs, unevenly divided between his staple riding four-seamer and the less frequent sinking two-seamer.

“I had some situations where I had some guys in scoring position and fell behind (in the ball-strike count),” Luebke said. “And I got beat on a fastball where if I could have thrown a good backdoor slider, a good change-up — something to get the hitter off my fastball — it would have given me a better chance to get out of that situation.”